Archive for March, 2011

In two weeks time, we will be exercising our democratic right to vote for our MPs again. Today I notice that the campaign posters had appeared by the road sides. It’s interesting to see that these old wooden frames with quite traditional campaign posters are still used, despite all the new forms of visibility for candidates on TV, Facebook and blogs, for example.

Our youngsters’ passive participation is alarming, though. Politics just doesn’t seem to interest many of them in the least.

This week has been too busy, and made doubly hard by the depressing weather. What would be a better boost for a down-in-the-dumps mood than baking a sinfully calory-rich chocolate cake? Tasting it was even better!

Awful weather! More snow with a strong wind. Walking outdooors felt like somebody was whipping my face. There is an old Finnish saying: “new snow is the death of the old snow”. Even this doesn’t seem to apply this year, as the more snow-thaw-more snow scenario has been repeating itself for weeks now.

On a more positive note, this photo turned out interesting – rather like an oil painting.

We are back to official ‘summer time’ although there is still plenty of snow and ice around. But the longer daylight hours are noticeable in the evenings. This picture was taken around 6.30 in the evening, when the sun still kept creating these golden or coppery patterns on our patio. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we will be making full use of the washing line and pegs outside!

For the third year, we celebrated the global Earth Hour, by switching off all the lights in the house for an hour. This time we went one step further, and also switched off all other electrical appliances, except for the essential freezer and fridge.

One hour in candlelight is not a lot to think about our earth. Even the shape of the poor old candle we chose somehow reminded me of the hole in the ozone layer, and the ailing earth floating alone in dark space. Sadly, I didn’t see many other dark homes in our neighbourhood…